No Blog This Week

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The_ScreamI had one all planned, and partially written, but circumstances have conspired against me. I decided, on a whim, to spend the weekend trying to meet a very short deadline on an opportunity I’d just learned about. I met it, but I spent all of my free time Saturday, Sunday and Monday evening writing and editing.

On top of that, I had a system outage at work Saturday night, had to plan for a long-overdue meeting with my staff Monday morning, and then Monday learned that we’d be pulling an all-nighter this Wednesday, and spending every moment until then scrambling to be ready.

So, sorry… No blog this week. But I hope to start next week feeling accomplished.

And, hey, if you’re coming to Baltimore Book Festival, stop by the SFWA tent at 4 PM this Friday and listen in on the panel I’m doing with fellow members of the Heinlein Facebook Forum on Robert A. Heinlein’s literary legacy.

Please Re-cut This Film! An appeal for Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? (Part One)

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imageI don’t want to write this review, but, dammit, I feel obligated.

Actually, I feel torn. One the one hand, I supported this movie financially via Kickstarter. I think very well of the producers and creative team who have, thus far, brought us one excellent film and one pretty good one in this trilogy. Criticizing them in public feels a bit like airing dirty laundry, disloyalty to the cause. And yet… When I see something done poorly, by people who want to do a good job, and I know how it could be done better… I feel like I have to say something. Even though saying something seems to put me in the ranks of the many film critics who will say this movie is a desperate, laughable attempt to bring recognition to a set of lunatic fringe ideas, and that the poor quality of the film is just a testament to how unsound their thinking is.

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Review – Space: 1999 – To Everything That Was

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space1999_classicI happened upon this volume almost by accident. I’ve always been a huge fan of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s 1975 – 1977 science fiction series, Space: 1999. I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it, in fact, because the show seems to provoke resentment from most corners of Fandom. If you’re a fan over the age of about 35, you remember how it felt to like Star Trek or comic books, back before Fandom became just another cash cow for Hollywood? Before the Marvel Movies conquered the box office? Before The Big Bang Theory? (The show, not the actual theory. Note the italics. Punctuation is key.) Before geek was chic?

Yeah, it was a bad feeling to be a fan in those days. Everyone looked down on you, to include your peers, siblings, teachers, sometimes even your parents! Well, as bad as that felt for, say a Star Trek fan, it was worse for a Space: 1999 fan. Everyone looked down on us, including all other fans! To this day, I’m careful at cons and on panel discussions about mentioning my love of this series, because people actually groan in revulsion.

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Goodreads Giveaway – Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity by Phil Giunta

Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity

by Phil Giunta

Giveaway ends September 24, 2014.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I’m very proud of this little collection, which introduces five new authors and a new artist to the Firebringer stable. I hope everyone will enter to win a free copy, and, if you don’t win, will buy a paper or e-edition from Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes & Noble or the retailer of your choice!

The Globe Wernike Elastic Bookcase

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IMG_0518Is writing about bookshelves a little too silly even for me? Well, sorry, but that’s what I got this week. It’s been a long, baaaaadddd week, with server crashes and badly delayed project deliverables and more than a few shouting matches. At such times, the most trivial things can grab our attention, amuse us, and lighten the load.

I’ve always liked barrister bookcases. The idea of keeping books under glass, like precious delicacies, appeals to me. They’re great for collectibles, too. If you like things like plastic action figures and Lego models (in which case, you’d love my house!) then you know what a chore it is to keep dust out of all the little nooks and crannies on them. Dust, I’m told by my action-figure-expert son, is deadly to plastic collectibles. It can actually soften and damage some plastics. (If you hate dust, you’d hate my house. 144 years’ worth of dead skin cells, old carpet fibers and dog and cat hair… plus some mouse skeletons in the walls. I’ve seen them.)

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Please help P.G. Holyfield!

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1965850_1408294617.4618Today, Evo Terra’s words (below) are far more important than anything I could say:

I’m emailing with terrible news. One of our own — P.G. Holyfield — is quickly losing his battle with cholangiocarcinoma, a particularly vicious form of cancer diagnosed only two weeks ago. There are no treatment options. The doctors are giving him days to live.

There’s nothing to be done medically for Patrick (the “P” in “P.G.”,) but there are things that can be done for the three young children he leaves behind. Effective now and for the foreseeable future, 100% of all donations made to his serialized audiobook — Murder at Avedon Hill — will be transferred to a fund set up for them. In addition, audio inserts will run for all listeners of his book making them aware of the situation and asking for them to donate. Generously.

…

[Please] donate to http://www.gofundme.com/pgfund.

…

More details on Patricks cancer can be found at http://specficmedia.com/2014/08/17/pg-holyfield-announcement. Spread it far and wide. The campaign has already received attention from Boing Boing.

Tell someone close to you how much you love them and how important they are to you. And then do it again.

…

And remember — there are no treatment options for Patrick. What we do now, we do in his name for his family.

Evo Terra
Friend of P.G. Holyfield
President of Podiobooks.com (way less important than the first title)

All I can add is my hope that you’ll donate generously, as Evo requests, and also that you’ll check out the work of this talented, creative individual. May he live forever through the stories he has told us:

Murder at Avedon Hill

The Sovereign Era: Year One

Canary in a Coal Mine

P.G…. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your gift of creativity, a gift of yourself.

Thank you for giving the world the gift of children who will carry forward a bit of your spirit, your strength and your values.

Thank you for being one of us.

Can’t Make it to Worldcon?

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Well, neither can I! And, if I could, I’d just blow way too much money buying books anyway. But WAIT! Even without going to Worldcon, you can pick up some amazing new books, and WITHOUT blowing way too much money! In honor of both Worldcon and the release of Firebringer Press’s new anthology, Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity, I’m teaming with a bunch of my colleagues to present the “Can’t Make it to WorldCon” eBook sale. We’re all slashing prices on one title, starting today and running through August 20th. So tell your friends, buy early, and buy often, and maybe some of these deserving, hardworking authors will be able to make it to WorldCon next year!

All is Silence

Robert L. Slater

What if death forgot you?
Lizzie, suicidal teen, searches for reasons to live and a stranger she thought was dead in this realistic apocalypse.

$3.99

(regularly $6.99)

Kindle | Nook | Kobo

The Armor of Light

Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

Dark magic threatens Elizabeth I of England.
Royal agents Sir Philip Sidney and Christopher Marlowe are sent to track the evil to its source, but at least one of their patrons would prefer that the culprit was never found…

99¢

(regularly $3.99)

Kindle | ePub | PDF | PRC

Dance for the Ivory Madonna

Don Sakers

The cyber-thriller that predicted Google Glass
“Imagine a Stand on Zanzibar written by a left-wing Robert Heinlein, and infused with the most exciting possibilities of the new cyber-technology: Dance for the Ivory Madonna.” -Melissa Scott

$1.99 / £0.99

(regularly $3.99/£2.49)

Kindle US | Kindle UK

Death by Silver

Melissa Scott & Amy Griswold

Murder and magic in a Victorian London that never was.
Metaphysician Ned Mathey certified that the Nevett family silver held no curse, but Nevett patriarch is dead, struck down by a silver candlestick. Can Mathey and his sometime lover Julian Lynes find out what really happened before more people die?

$3.99

(regularly $9.99)

ePub | PDF | PRC

The Emperor’s Agent

Jo Graham

Courtesan, actress, medium—spy.
Elza is Napoleon’s secret agent, tasked with uncovering a British spy in the camps of the Grand Army. With the life of the man she loves hanging in the balance, it will take all her cunning, charm, and a magical ability she is only beginning to learn to use.

99¢

(regularly $4.99)

Kindle | ePub | PDF | PRC

Railroad Spine

Geonn Cannon

Steampunk adventure.
After having her child taken from her for the crime of sharing knowledge, an airship captain teams up with a group of terrorists to bring down an oppressive government.

$1.99

(regularly $3.99)

Kindle

Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity

edited by Phil Giunta

Thirteen imaginative tales of horror, science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural by Daniel Patrick Corcoran, Michael Critzer, Phil Giunta, Amanda Headlee, Susanna Reilly, Stuart S. Roth, Lance Woods and Mark Time & Parsec Award-Winner Steven H. Wilson.

99¢

Use Smashwords coupon HN84Y

(regularly $2.99)

Kindle | ePub | PDF | LRF | RTF | PDB | TXT

Sword and Chant

Blair MacGregor

Epic Fantasy
Shala and Jaynes are enemies, but they must lead their people to reconcile before the god of sacrifice – strengthened by mortal bloodshed – grows powerful enough to crush any who defy His commands.

$1.99

(regularly $4.99)

Kindle | Nook

Review: The Search for Maggie Ward

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TheSearchForMaggieWardI suppose it’s appropriate, when reviewing a book by a priest, to open with a confession. Here’s mine: The Search for Maggie Ward made me rethink my status as a confirmed agnostic.

Before, I had not encountered very much gentle Christianity.

I had not encountered clerics, much less a celibate cleric, who had anything to say about sex. Greeley not only had a lot to say about sex, what he had to say was also overwhelmingly positive.

 

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Review – Tribute: Frank Capra

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frank-capra-comic-bookI somehow missed this when it came out in time for Christmas, 2012. In fact, I’m not 100% sure how I stumbled across it last week. Other than their Logan’s Run adaptations a while back, I don’t read too many Bluewater comics, so I doubt it was a house ad. Alas, that’s the nature of the Internet, especially when you’re as ADD as I am. Searching for one thing can lead to something you didn’t expect, which sets you on a mission. In this case, surfing around for something unrelated brought up a stray reference to a Capra tribute done in comic book form, and I had to find out what that was about. So whatever I’d been searching for was forgotten, and I had to jump on ComiXology and buy this.

Frank Capra is one of my heroes. I have a list of four big personal heroes, and a list of, I guess, “others.” Mostly right now the distinction between “big” and “other” is that the “others” are still living, or that their principal body of work falls within my lifetime.

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I Live for Negative Feedback.

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12387034831212914571adam_lowe_Three_Emotions_of_Cartoon_3.svg.medI live for negative feedback.

I do. That load of bull the counseling community wants to feed you, about how you need ten positive comments* to equal the impact of one negative comment? That’s just them selling something. They know no one’s going to get ten positive comments for every negative. Einstein proved that.

I think.

If he didn’t it’s because he lacked proper time management skills.

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